Single Shot: Public displays of sex mean it must be summer

By DIANE MAPES, SPECIAL TO THE P-I

Published
10:00 pm PDT, Wednesday, June 20, 2007

It's been six months since Single Shot started, and in honor of the occasion (and the official start of summer, i.e. Outdoor Sex Season), I thought I'd present a brief wrap-up of recent highlights from the wonderful world of singledom.

Speed-mating

Ask any Washington State Patrol officer and they'll tell you Interstate 90 is not the place to have sex -- at least not if you're having it while barreling down the highway in a sport utility vehicle. But the naked Seattle couple pulled over last week in flagrante dedrunko weren't the only ones to get caught, um, coupling in an unusual location.

Two weeks earlier, in the unfortunately named town of Punta Gorda (i.e. "fat end"), Fla., another naked duo was spotted having sex at the top of a 100-foot-tall construction crane (somebody's been eating their carrots!).

Police broke up the precariously perched party, who then quickly dressed and shimmied back down to earth, claiming they hadn't been having sex, but rather "photographing the city skyline."

(Can you move your "lens" just a little to the left, honey? Oh yes, that's perfect.)

Curious about how many people actually do the nasty while in public, I logged on to Wis.dm, where snoopy journalists and scores of perfectly normal people can pose questions about everything from sex to spaceships to whether your socks always match.

Out of 826 responses, 53 percent say they'd indulged in the occasional bit of adventure sex, while 47 percent claim they never took the party out of the house. Movie theaters seem to be one of the most popular locales for public lovemaking (yet another good argument for Netflix); cars, parks, beaches, restaurant/bar bathrooms and Gap dressing rooms also scored high marks. The most unusual spots for impromptu passion? A crowded bus, a Ferris wheel, a Navy warship, a Catholic church parking lot (during Mass, no less!) and, not too surprisingly, the White House.

Care to share your favorite, um, hangout, for outdoor amour? Inquiring minds -- and quite possibly the management at the Gap -- would love to know.

The art of the breakup

Looks like e-mail and voice mail rejection services are on the rise, with more and more companies offering singles the chance to avoid those nasty F2F (i.e. fact-to-face) confrontations by dumping their dates digitally.

BreakingUpIsEasyToDo.com offers two voice mail options: a Breakup Butler, who delivers a gentle letdown in an elegant British accent ("My feelings have changed and I'm no longer capable of giving you what you want and deserve") and the self-explanatory Breakup Bitch, who delivers her thrall-busting message amid a tirade of insults such as "I'd rather suffer a paper cut to the eyeball than spend one more day with you."

The aptly named PoisonPen.comsends e-mail missives for those occasions "when you care enough to send the very worst." Among their tamer offerings: "Life's a bitch ... and so are you," "I'm sorry ... I ever met you" and "You're the one ... the wrong one."

Should you be thinking of going this route -- or even coming up with your own personalized version of the digital dump -- keep in mind not everybody appreciates a cold impersonal write-off.

Sophie Calle, a French artist known for her unconventional work, turned her private rejection into a public display -- literally -- by asking 107 women to analyze and interpret the "I feel like sleeping with other women, it's over" e-mail she got from her boyfriend, using their responses to create an art installation titled "Take Care of Yourself" (the writer's parting words).

Included within the show are a gigantic blowup of the guy's note with all his diction and grammar errors blue-penciled by a copy editor, an analysis of his personality by a forensic psychiatrist ("a true, twisted manipulator ... to be avoided categorically"), and a critique of the ex-boyfriend's manners by a famous etiquette consultant who specializes in savoir-vivre (her conclusion: He has none).

The rejection letter was translated into Latin, Braille, Morse code, bar code and shorthand, and transformed into everything from a fairy tale to an opera to a crossword puzzle.

It was also tangoed, sung, performed as a puppet show, blasted by a shotgun and shredded to bits by a parrot. A video even features the e-mail sitting in an empty chair opposite Calle during a "couples counseling" session.

Got a nightmarish breakup tale you'd like to tell (my favorites are the ones in which the person takes you to a fancy restaurant to do the deed in front of a roomful of people, i.e. the Wine, Dine and Dump)? Do dish.

Introductory offers

Feel like you're the only one whose online profile regularly attracts random offers of midnight foot massages and/or creepy questions like, "Where can I reach you if I want to call you 10 times a day?" Don't fret, you're hardly alone. You'll find plenty of miserable company at ILikedYourProfile.blogspot.com, where singles send in their most absurd dating e-mails for public posting (sans names and other bits of identifiable data, natch).

Some highlights from the site: "I need a Momma for my babies (and) you look like you have spectacular ovaries" and "Hi, I was just wondering if you are interested in having a sexual servant?"

But wait, there's more! WeirdDatingMail.com offers even more grist for the cocktails-with-girlfriends mill, with classic introductory lines such as: "I can cook dinner for you. Do you like squirrel?" and "I wrote you two hours ago, and you did not answer until now. You are a fool."

Nothing like making a good first impression, eh?

Both sites welcome contributions from any and all singles (most seem to be posted by women, but there are some doozies from the guys, including "Do you like stuffed animals? I am a Build-a-Bear fanatic!").

I pray none of you ever receives the kind of e-mails that make up the bizarre bread and butter of these sites, but if you do, feel free to send 'em along (and don't forget to CC me!).